A navigation apparatus, which was used only by people of a class due to a high price, has been generalized and are loaded in most vehicles recently. Also, the navigation apparatus has been miniaturized and can be mounted in a mobile communication terminal.
Generally, a navigation technology provides a function for grasping own location in real-time through a Global Positioning System (GPS) and guiding a road to a destination.
Recently, there is an additional service for providing counterpart location information such as a road guide service in consideration of a traffic situation and a friend seeking service based on a communication channel used in a mobile communication terminal of mobile communication service companies.
However, since the additional service can be used only when an extra fee should be paid, only limited subscribers may use the additional service. Also, the additional service has not been applied to diverse application fields.
Referring to FIG. 1, a location information providing system of a conventional centrally controlled method will be described hereinafter.
When a GPS satellite 11 transmits a GPS signal, a navigation 12 receives the GPS signal through a GPS antenna and calculates a present location.
Subsequently, a mobile communication terminal 13 transmits the location information transmitted from the navigation 12 to a location information collecting and processing apparatus 14 through a base station.
The location information collecting and processing apparatus 14 acquires location information of each mobile communication terminal through the above procedure.
Therefore, when the mobile communication terminal 13 intends to acquire location information of another mobile communication terminal, the mobile communication terminal 13 accesses to the location information collecting and processing apparatus 14 and acquires location information of a targeted mobile communication terminal through authentication by the additional service subscriber.